Izori follows after Nauxha as the pair makes a hasty exit of the Crimson Inferno after their dubious attempt at diplomacy. The tsabhua's blue-furred back is bristling with a tension he shares. He does not think that standard negotiations often end with one side firing off blaster bolts whilst the other attempts to club them to death with their tail. But then again, neither of them are diplomats. Miru truly should have sent someone else.

The Inferno is a hellish place to Izori's eyes. He'd first ventured there out of scientific curiousity; what sort of extremophile flora might call the dark craggy stone and soot-blacked walls, so dulled by the heat that you could not tell that they were part of a bunker system, their home? What miraculous or deadly properties might they have?

Thus far, Izori had spotted nothing living here aside from the volcanics themselves and the colonies obeying DPIP's command to do battle with them. Where the walls parted to reveal lower sections of the Inferno, the ground below—a rippling expanse of molten stone that hissed and spat occasionally—shimmered with heat. It might have seemed like simple common sense that no plants would be able to survive here. But Izori knew that species could be shockingly adaptable. If one always assumed and never checked, they missed out on the opportunity to make new discoveries.

…and, sometimes, that checking did not bear fruit. Izori sighs, then blinks and hastens along the way they'd come—he'd lagged behind, distracted by his thoughts, and Nauxha has gotten uncomfortably far ahead.

Bounding after her, he does not notice the collapsed form of one of the volcanics until he is right next to them. He yelps, hopping back, expecting to hear a threatening growl and cruel words, but the volcanic does not move. Their eyes are closed, chest rising and falling gently as their breath sets the dust on the dry earth around them to dancing, but they do not move.

Behind the volcanic is a smooth round shape, so unlike everything else in this harsh environment that Izori cannot miss it. Its pale shell, half-buried in ashy soil, shines softly in the reddish-golden light that seems to suffuse every part of the Inferno.

An egg.

He steps gingerly past the unconscious volcanic to crouch beside it. He had heard many stories from his kin of the barbarity of the volcanics, of how they mated in violence and abandoned their eggs in the soil where they fell. Izori knows of the blood-rivalry between their people, and thus perhaps should be a skeptic of such stories—but his recent experiences had not proven those stories quite wrong. And the egg certainly looked abandoned; it was half buried, after all. Perhaps he could save it a life of brutality by taking it now. How much of the way the volcanics acted was simple nuture?

But, equally strong, is the thought of, and what if I am wrong? What if I am stealing it from a loving family?

"Izori!" Nauxha's voice interrupts his thoughts. She must have noticed that he wasn't following behind her anymore. He can see her watching when he glances on ahead, the warm light has turned her pale face a shade of reddish-lavender.

He takes a breath, and then makes a decision. With one delicate, clawed hand, the tark'ee scoops up the egg from the ground, leaving a neat round hole behind where it had been partially buried. Izori has never held a tark'ee's egg before, and it's heavier than he'd thought it would be. I might have to ask Nauxha for help carrying it, he thinks, with no lack of embarrassment.

"Coming!" He dashes up the tunnel, egg in hand, and prays that he has not done something wrong by taking it.